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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • We’ll have to see whether David Ellison reorients the scheduling strategically. It’s hard to imagine he will not.

    5 years ago, as the transition was happening after the remerger, the demographic statistics I saw showed that CBSAA/P+ had the best range of demographics. And it had the best youth/teen/kids audience after Disney+.

    Unlike, NBC Universal’s problem with Peacock and Discovery+, which had two very different demographics with little interest the content the other offered, Paramount+ launched with a broad and diverse base.

    But the programming and production choices of the past five years have brutally squandered that. It seems that the millennial, middle age Bro, and older male audience has been the target — live sports, Taylor Sheridan everything etc.

    It already feels as though P+ has been reprogrammed to make the current US administration happy, pushing a certain kind of American exceptionalism, but that’s not a successful global business strategy.

    It’s really only the content coming in from CBS linear and Star Trek that’s kept the balance on the platform.

    We keep hearing about content being produced in Paramount’s South American studios or in agreements with partners in Spain and France, but none of that richness in offerings are making it to the North American platform. Netflix remains dominant in offering high quality content from outside Hollywood.


  • I agree. The more we see, the more enthusiastic I am.

    The concept of an Academy show was in development hell for so long - basically, since the hiatus after Discovery’s first season.

    And we know that it was originally kicked around before TNG went into production.

    So, this seems to have been a hard one to make work. The cost to produce a high quality VFX-rich show that appeals to a teen and young adult demographic, requires that the show must also be rich enough elements to draw the wider Trek base.

    I’m hopeful that, as with Prodigy, Starfleet Academy may be one of the rare shows that satisfies a mass demographic despite the streaming era.

    The risk is that, like Prodigy, Paramount may not promote it broadly enough.

    However, with A-listers heading the cast, one can hope that it will get a lot of promotion beyond the genre media.





  • I’m going to say any or none of the suggestions here may be right.

    And some of them, like Inner Light, are awful choices simply because their impact is very dependent on having the context the rest of the series and characters.

    The main thing is that Star Trek has a wide variety of tones. The way to success is to provide excellent examples of very Trekie episodes that are in the genre or tone that your brother already likes.

    Don’t show them action if they like cerebral mystery. Don’t show them romance if they like action. Don’t show them intense drama if they’re into comedy. If they’re into animated comedies or anime, start with Lower Decks or Prodigy not TNG.

    Examples from this perspective…

    If they like psychological horror, then TNG’s ‘Schisms’ or Voyager’s ‘The Thaw’ might be best.

    If they like action, Discovery’s two part pilot might be the one or even the movie Star Trek (2009).


  • It seems that Christina has been able to convince the Showrunners to incorporate some of her own enthusiasms into La’an’s character.

    In a TrekMovie piece, she’s quoted saying that she and Ethan Peck had a total of 75 hours of dance and fight choreography preparation over the season. The heaviest episode is in the back half of the season.

    While I enjoyed the edgier La’an, Goldsman seems to have a very rigid idea that, in drama, trauma is the foundation of character development. It’s tiresome when every single character has to have a traumatic backstory, experience trauma in the show, or look forward to trauma (in Pike’s case).

    So, as an example, it seems that the only way for Ortegas to have a character arc is for her to be traumatized and go through the process of overcoming that.

    In that case, it’s better to have La’an move on. Between Tomorrow cubed and Hegemony II, we’ve seen two very significant life events for her that make it credible that she could finally more on.




  • I’m glad to get any kind of 5th season.

    If there’s a new show, I would rather that they time skip forever to the end of TOS, after TAS.

    A late year 4 and year 5 show would fit with the age of the cast, especially Paul Wesley as Kirk. Even Celia, who was a young Uhura in the first season of SNW is catching up given the slow pace of production and release with the pandemic and strike impacting timelines. Even if they just carried on, a TOS-based SNW spin-off wouldn’t be premiered before late 2027 or early 2028 at best.

    Disappointed, but not surprised that SNW was sold as the lead into TOS - the entire show seems to have been based on that pitch to the senior executives obsessed with reboots.

    It’s a great show but not what it could have been but likely the only version of it that could have been greenlit in this past decade.



  • The reason WHO frames common risk factors and common chronic diseases is because persons with these risks, conditions and diseases often end up with more than one of these diseases.

    e.g., WHO now considers obesity a disease in itself, but obesity is also a biological risk factor for cancer and diabetes.

    There are a lot of interrelationships in the risks.

    More, with these conditions, they are also more vulnerable to infectious diseases.

    It’s important though to keep in mind that, as I note in another reply, these kinds of studies aren’t just about informing individuals’ choices.

    They’re not about ‘blaming’ or ‘shaming’ individuals choices.

    They are about understanding what are the underlying determinants of health and risk factors that are shaping health outcomes.

    Back to the study in question, and the OP’s remark that they were surprised that people were eating that much processed meat daily…

    If the protein sources that are most available and affordable are the most unhealthy, preprocessed ones, then consumers will buy and consume more of these than healthier ones.

    And their preferences and consumption habits will be shaped by these experiences.

    And that will affect overall health and life expectancy of the population.


  • I would argue that this is missing the point - and so, in fact, is the article reporting on the study.

    What is important to keep in mind is that the benefit of this research is not primarily about ‘telling’ or ‘informing’ individuals so that they can make different food consumption decisions.

    It’s more about how food environments are shaped to encourage healthy or unhealthy choices.

    If eating that much processed meat daily or weekly increases cancer risks, what’s driving or nudging people towards that.

    Is it barriers to availability, accessibility or affordability of healthier and palatable choices?



  • Cancer is the leading cause of premature mortality and morbidity (death and disability) in Canada.

    So, an accumulation of small risks, and avoidance of risks, have significant benefits at both the individual and population levels.

    The general population needs to be aware that unhealthy eating is impacting their lives and quality of life.

    Let’s stick to the peer reviewed science and evidence consensus.

    WHO established the four behavioural common risk factors for the four major chronic noncommunicable diseases decades ago.

    The kind of research synthesis in this article is about continuing to build the evidence on relative and absolute risks, and in some cases look at how these differences impact different populations more or less due to intersecting determinants.

    Common risk factors

    • unhealthy diet
    • physical inactivity
    • tobacco use
    • harmful use of alcohol
    • air pollution added more recently

    Major chronic noncommunicable diseases

    • cancer
    • cardiovascular diseases
    • diabetes
    • chronic respiratory diseases

  • I’m rather interested to see where they go with Korby.

    It’s important for Christine Chapel’s character that the backstory they are developing for the TOS relationship is credible.

    It was really rather sad and mortifying for Chapel in TOS to be shown as a intelligent and successful scientist, who took a Starfleet starship posting as a nurse to track down a missing fiance only to have him revealed as a dark mastermind turning people into androids.

    Having what appeared to be a one sided, unrequited longing for Spock as well, made Chapel come across as pathetic, and very much shifted it to misogyny. Or, at least a complete failure of a Bechtel-type test where a female character exists for more than her interest in male characters.

    (Even Majel Barrett’s Number One in ‘The Cage’ was put in an unrequited attraction situation with Pike.)